Perhaps you could determine the version of perl during the makefile building process, set a proper variable, and then run the XS code through some kind of preprocessor? I'm not sure how ExtUtils::MM does things, so I can't comment on the difficulty. Considering all the work that DBD::Oracle does when you do perl Makefile.PL, it must be possible.

PERL_VER = `perl -e 'print $['`
preprocess:
  @cpp -DPERL_VAR=${PERL_VAR} forks.xs forks.i 
  @mv forks.i forks.xs
[download]

In forks.xs, use happy fun #ifdefs to partition the code. What do you think?

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